Numbers dont die, or do they? PVP class&specc balances

Hello everyone, few days ago i luckly bumped up to the this informative thing, and i wanted to make all dear mmo-champion forum members to know about it. If you care about hardcore pvp and you are on the scientific thinking part of the world, you will love this.

One nice guy, prepared a website which you can see how much % of the playerbase plays a class or specc, and how much % of that class or specc is present in the high level arena and BG. Basicly it is most realistic and scientific way to see if the class is good, bad or overpowered in pvp. (i will explain deeply later at the bottom why it is the most realistic and scientific way we can have an idea about classes situation)

Basicly if it would be perfect game with super balance, global presentation in the game would be more or less equal in % to presentation in high-end pvp since we have a huge database . But reality is not like that. If the presentation % in arena is higher then global that means that class is OP, if its below that class is underpowered. And here how you read this information:

It helps alot to newcomers of arena or to people who just started the game after long time to have an idea which specc of their class has easier time in which bracket.

It is a perfect guide to check before you start to level a character with aims of high-end pvp.

It is quite a good guide to check your and your friends pvp skills before whining to anyone or anywhere.

Important thing to remember : This shows the current and past situation of the classes and specs and this is a game that everything changes really fast. It gives a good idea how well a class and specc performs in that moment, but it may be really different in 2-3 weeks.

How this statics work and why they are the closest to reality and most scientific?

First of all this calculation are far from perfect but the are also by far the best we have. There are many thing that effects the presentation of a class at high-end pvp such as :Amount of skill needed to play a class good enough to be able to perform well, diffirence of the game style of classes which changes the player base who play it, how much percent of the player base of that class plays that class for pve or pvp and many more. The nice part is because this calculations are made form over 24.000.000 of examples, and the fact that many of these factors exists for each class, gets these little things when you change to results as % pretty much eliminated.
So in a way it is easy to pass that part and at the end only thing we must know is , % of the wow players that plays the class.

Imagine it like this, if there was a country where %20 of the population is blond then %20 of all the engineers, would be blond too, or %20 of barbers or lumberjacks also %20 of excellent barbers and really bad barbers would be blond too. It goes exacty the same way for the wow, if %10 of the all wow players play rogue, then we should expect %10 of all players to be and high-end pve as rogue, and %10 of all high rated arena players to be rogue too. In a perfect world ofcourse. So as we know how it should be to be perfect, we can easly see how much lower or higher % then it should be and understand how overpowered or underpowered is the class.

While it's indeed an interesting roundup, nobody should really be surprised to see any of those numbers - least of all Blizzard.
Especially when it comes to the OP classes. warriors, mages, hpala and resto sham sitting at or above 10% rep - 300% pure OPness ;-).

Although the disparity for warriors really is ludicrous, worse than I even imagined. Good god.

this is the 3v3 only data btw, I think it paints a more accurate picture of just how broken it really is

Cool to see this, actually alot closer representation than what ive seen previously.

Still the whole "Overpowered just because ~10% rep" isnt always accurate. Hpallys are in no way overpowered right now and I would say are sitting in a solid 3rd place in the healer ranks but there are ALOT of them and they fit in nicely with melee cleaves but are not overpowered in the least.

Cool to see this, actually alot closer representation than what ive seen previously.

Still the whole "Overpowered just because ~10% rep" isnt always accurate. Hpallys are in no way overpowered right now and I would say are sitting in a solid 3rd place in the healer ranks but there are ALOT of them and they fit in nicely with melee cleaves but are not overpowered in the least.

They are not as broken as they have been at various points in the past but healing is as OP as ever in general. Yes, the "easy to do well" factor mentioned in the opening post definitely has more merit for hpalas than the other healers and their synergy with warrior cleaves has a big effect as well but this data clearly suggests hpalas are nowhere near as popular picks and numerous to explain their extraordinary overrepresentation.

actually the lower you go in the ratings the more lopsided the OP class rep will be since often times the overtuned classes are also the ones easy to do well on for less skilled players. Always has been like that in the past. warrior rep during late wotlk might have been ~15% at high ratings where people have a clue. It was 20%+ at 1800 if I remember the stats correctly.

If we get data about lower ratings I can guarantee you warriors and healers are dominating even more.

firstly: This data doesn't account for teams who are camping 2200 like all of the BM hunters who double bm'd or KFC'd their way to 2200 in the first weeks before stampede nerf and haven't actually queued in weeks.

secondly: It includes prot classes which obviously aren't going to be used in Arena. This means that everyone has slightly higher numbers on the left side as there is more % of non-prot classes above 2200.

thirdly: Just because a class is higher than before, or is higher than others might not be because it's more overpowered, it might just have more comps available. This accounts for healers too, they should be on a completely separate graph / table. If you look at the graph, priests have only dipped slightly, this is because it includes Shadow and Disc/Holy. Disc/Holy dropped HUGELY and Shadow has gone up.

firstly: This data doesn't account for teams who are camping 2200 like all of the BM hunters who double bm'd or KFC'd their way to 2200 in the first weeks before stampede nerf.

secondly: It includes prot classes which obviously aren't going to be used in Arena. This means that everyone has slightly higher numbers on the left side as there is more % of non-prot classes above 2200.

thirdly: Just because a class is higher than before, or is higher than others might not be because it's more overpowered, it might just have more comps available.

A lot of things might be. In the case of warriors, non disc healers and mages it is because they are OP as fuck though. Warriors have a lot of viable comps because instagibbing people with little effort works with a lot of classes who just stand by and watch (like ret lol)

If anything, the statistics are showing that mages are NOT at all an "OP class", in fact they are an underpowered CLASS. Mage and warrior really have only one arena spec so of course you're going to see their one viable arena spec massively overrepresented compared to classes with 3 arena specs to choose from. With eleven classes in game the expected representation at perfect balance would be 9.3 % each class and mages are hardly drastically above that.

Compare for example the 9.6 % + 3.9 % + 0.4 % representation of paladins, well above mages. Druids are above mages. Shamans are above mages as well. Warriors too. If anything, mages are an average class. Given that these ratings were done mostly long before the recent mage nerfs, I think we can all agree now that mages are in desperate need of major buffs.

If arcane mages are doing worse than DPS monks it's hard to see how the class could be considered OP.

firstly: This data doesn't account for teams who are camping 2200 like all of the BM hunters who double bm'd or KFC'd their way to 2200 in the first weeks before stampede nerf and haven't actually queued in weeks.

secondly: It includes prot classes which obviously aren't going to be used in Arena. This means that everyone has slightly higher numbers on the left side as there is more % of non-prot classes above 2200.

thirdly: Just because a class is higher than before, or is higher than others might not be because it's more overpowered, it might just have more comps available. This accounts for healers too, they should be on a completely separate graph / table. If you look at the graph, priests have only dipped slightly, this is because it includes Shadow and Disc/Holy. Disc/Holy dropped HUGELY and Shadow has gone up.

Well it is not really all like that. Prot classes are actually still used, which you can easly see the number of prot warriors, which is higher then rogues and monks all specs together.

About the comps, comps are actually becoming possible as speccs get to be overpowered. Now a warrior can make lets say 10 viable comps at 3v3 (just a number) while non of other classes can, and that is because they are overpowered. How is that? Simple. As classes got overpowered, they replace the other combos, because they deal more damage and have more control then anyone while the are resilient as much as others. Lets get the DK vs Warrior in this moment, Dk naturally had more CC, less damage but more resilience versus warrior in history of wow. But currently because they are overpowered they can easly replace any combo which there was a DK before, therefore they have more comps.

Historicly we have seen this alot and you can see anytime you check the compositions difference between now and 3 month ago. An overpowered class will always have more composition , because he is overpowered.

So actually no, there is no high presentation because avaible comps, there is alot of viable comps because they can replace any other class since they are overpowered, therefore there is higher presentation.

---------- Post added 2012-12-06 at 01:31 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Firebert

Only showing 2200+ skews the numbers, a lot.

As 1500 rating is the average, they should show that as well.

Actually it is really good filter to NOT have less then 2200. Because basicly 2200 rating is a rating that you if you reach that means you are more or less playing your class almost in most potention without making any mistakes. While if you are playing at 1600 that means you are playing your class with alot of mistakes, and you know what? if you class is overpowered you are allowed to make much more mistakes since they will matter much less. So actually you will see way more bigger gaps in little ratings and there will more more player based causes for that ,then design based causes.

---------- Post added 2012-12-06 at 01:49 PM ----------

Originally Posted by jaakkeli

If anything, the statistics are showing that mages are NOT at all an "OP class", in fact they are an underpowered CLASS. Mage and warrior really have only one arena spec so of course you're going to see their one viable arena spec massively overrepresented compared to classes with 3 arena specs to choose from. With eleven classes in game the expected representation at perfect balance would be 9.3 % each class and mages are hardly drastically above that.

Compare for example the 9.6 % + 3.9 % + 0.4 % representation of paladins, well above mages. Druids are above mages. Shamans are above mages as well. Warriors too. If anything, mages are an average class. Given that these ratings were done mostly long before the recent mage nerfs, I think we can all agree now that mages are in desperate need of major buffs.

If arcane mages are doing worse than DPS monks it's hard to see how the class could be considered OP.

Actually it never means mages as general they are underpowered. if you make the calculations, global mage ratio is %9.3 while total 2200 is %11.2

So mages are better then normal at the end, but you can easly say arcane and fire is really underpowered, while frost us super overpowered. As general, you specc may not be, but your class as mage is more then normal. Never underpowered.

why people call dk overpower class lol dk is at 2.4% in 3s?also this is world and not US.

Did EU rating got reset at 2.2k?

Dk is not overpowered its a noob stomper. I'm also a noob in pvp getting zerged by dk+another melee teams sometimes even by a single dk but I do not call them OP because i know they are not, they have so little survivability and the least cc capability of all classes by far. Remember garen, evelyn, twitch in lol they were godlike at 1-29 bracket, at ranked they were not even viable. Dont know if they are still the same as I quit lol 8-9 months ago.

I had honestly expected more shadow priests, frost mages and resto druids, with less holy paladins and BM hunters. By the way, if you are looking at arena represenation you have to assume that those who are flagged as fury warriors, prot warriors, arcane mages, fire mages etc were all in a secondary spec (not their primary spec) which this was recorded, so warrior representation is in fact much higher than what is shown (20.1% to be exact). That means (assuming no double warrior teams which is a false assumption) that almost 2 out of 3 teams above 2.2k has a warrior in it.

By the way, if you are looking at arena represenation you have to assume that those who are flagged as fury warriors, prot warriors, arcane mages, fire mages etc were all in a secondary spec (not their primary spec) which this was recorded, so warrior representation is in fact much higher than what is shown (20.1% to be exact). That means (assuming no double warrior teams which is a false assumption) that almost 2 out of 3 teams above 2.2k has a warrior in it.

this is a strange thing that i also thought first, but this presentation get reset and updated maximum every 2 days, so if it was like that and people just cought in other speccs , there would be high changes in the presentation every 2-3 days. but instead they almost always stay same and change really slowly. So i am not sure if this is the situation.

this is a strange thing that i also thought first, but this presentation get reset and updated maximum every 2 days, so if it was like that and people just cought in other speccs , there would be high changes in the presentation every 2-3 days. but instead they almost always stay same and change really slowly. So i am not sure if this is the situation.

Just think again.

Did you? Allright now, if we'd talk about 20 person that would happen but there is about 2500 players at 2200+ that means 250 mages, 450 warriors etc. That makes presentation stable.